A crowd made up entirely of ghosts.
I could feel them standing in a loose semicircle before us, and I knew without having to see them that they were all staring at the building toward which we were headed.
What did they know that we didn’t?
A chill ran up my back, and I suddenly didn’t want to have anything to do with this case. But then Stanton was taking me by the arm, leading me toward the front door, and whatever thought I’d had about objecting to being here faded as quickly as the ghosts we passed through.
I felt a single shadowy figure separate itself from the watching pack and come toward us. Whisper. What was she doing here? I wondered.
She caught up with us before we reached the building, slipping her little hand in mine. Apparently she wanted me to see whatever it was that was waiting for us inside, for she loaned me her sight without my having to ask for it.
That was a first.
Fool that I was, I didn’t have the common sense to be worried about it, either.
A uniformed officer met us at the building entrance. Stanton flashed his badge and we went inside without a word.
The brownstone’s lower floor had been converted into a private gallery, the wide space carved into minishowrooms with temporary dividers. The smell of heated iron and shaved wood filled the space. Each room held three or four different pieces of artwork, everything from small, tabletop carvings to giant, surreal pieces of sculpture made from wood and iron. As we passed the first of the minishowrooms, I caught sight of a particularly large piece that rose twisting and turning toward the cathedral ceiling. Through Whisper’s ghostsight the wood and iron were transformed into a thousand human hands all reaching for the sky high above, and the sculpture pulsed with an eerie sense of yearning.
After that I kept my gaze on the floor and away from the artwork around me.
Stanton led me to the rear of the brownstone and up a cast-iron spiral staircase to a large, well-lit apartment. Like most lofts, it was a mostly open floor plan, with the kitchen blending into the living room space just beyond. The far wall of the apartment was made of glass, allowing a breathtaking view of the city. Sunlight streamed in through the window, a sharp contrast to the tragedy we knew we’d find elsewhere in the space.
At an impatient gesture from Stanton, the uniformed officer guarding the bedroom door found something else to do. Once the guard was out of the way we entered the room and stepped around to the other side of the enormous bed that took up a good portion of the room. There, on the floor facing the far corner, was the body of the victim.
Where the last body had been posed kneeling in prayer, this one had been left prone in complete supplication, though it had the same strange coloration as the first. The man was kneeling with his face down and his arms stretched out over his head, his palms flat against the floor.
Stanton, not knowing I could see the corpse, took a moment to explain its positioning and condition to me. I figured he wanted to be certain I understood the connection between the two killings. “We’re guessing that he died sometime last night, maybe even yesterday afternoon, based on the state of the body. We’ll know for sure once the M.E. has a chance to get him on the table.”
I thought that rigor mortis would move the body out of position, so I asked Stanton why it hadn’t.
“His hands and feet have been nailed to the floor,” he said, with no more emotion than if you’d asked him the time of day, and as I watched his gaze take in the body and the rest of the room around him, I understood why. It was like a switch had been thrown somewhere in his mind and now the scene had transformed for him; rather than being a horrible tragedy it had become a peculiar puzzle to be solved. He now had two bodies killed in similar fashion and—you could see it in his eyes—he wasn’t going to stop until he had caught whoever had done these horrible deeds. He didn’t have time for emotions; they would just get in his way.
I wondered if I could ever be that analytical.
And in the same heartbeat realized that I already was. After all, hadn’t I driven off my wife and all my friends, given up my life, all in the name of finding my daughter?
Perhaps Stanton and I were more alike than I thought.
Now that was truly frightening.
“Okay, Hunt. Give me something I can use.” With that he clapped me on the back and walked out of the room.
Right. No pressure.
Whisper was already with me, so we got right down to business. She reached out and placed her hand against Marshall’s remains.
I withstood the roaring freight train and the sudden avalanche of pain. When it passed, I opened my eyes, expecting to see the events as they had transpired several nights before.
Instead, all I saw was the room in front of me, dead man and all.
I turned and look down at Whisper. With her head bent forward and her eyes squeezed tightly shut, she was the picture of concentration. It was obvious that she was doing what she could to conjure up the events of the past, but this time it wasn’t working. I let her work at it for a few more minutes and then gently told her to stop.
She did so reluctantly, and the expression on her face said she wasn’t happy with her failure. I didn’t know what the problem was. Maybe the killer had done something to mask his actions, though why he didn’t do it the first time around if he did it this time was beyond me. Maybe it was simply a function of how much time had passed. Either way, we’d come up bone dry.
Until I turned away from the corpse and discovered that we were no longer alone.
The ghost of James Marshall was watching us from just a few feet away. He appeared as he had in life: a tall, thin man with dark, curly hair, dressed in a neat pair of chinos and a button-down dress shirt. Only the emptiness in his eyes and the flickering image of his form gave away the fact that he was no longer among the living.
Before I could say or do anything, Marshall strode forward and passed right through me!
A wave of intense cold rushed throughout my body as my skin made contact with his ghostly form. With it came a cascade of mental images: Marshall in gloves and safety glass, working on one of his sculptures; Marshall watching the sun set from the big glass window in his apartment; Marshall kneeling amidst a grove of white birch trees, with his head bowed as if in prayer.
But it was the very last image that held me spellbound, for it showed him rearing up in agony from his kneeling position in the grove, his hands trying to force back the dark, shadowy shape that appeared to be trying to envelop him from the head down.
As Marshall’s ghost stepped away I fell to my knees, momentarily drained of energy. It was all I could do to hold on to Whisper’s hand, desperate to keep my link to her open, in case there was something more for us to see. My mind was working furiously, trying to decide if Marshall’s actions had been meant to cause some harm to me. I didn’t think my system could take another encounter like that. If he did it again, I was going to be in serious trouble.
Thankfully, that didn’t seem to be on his agenda. When I had caught my breath and was able to raise my head again, I found him standing near one of the walls, watching me closely. He held my gaze for a moment and then pointed with one spectral finger at the wall beside him.
Just then the door to the bedroom opened and Marshall’s ghost vanished as swiftly and as silently as it had come. I heard someone enter the room behind me and knew without looking that it was Stanton.
“You all right, Hunt?”
I nodded in reply to Stanton’s question, too stunned by what had happened to speak. I’ve been seeing ghosts for several years now. I knew they could communicate with me if they chose; Whisper, and even Scream, were proof of that. But I’d never had any other ghost do so until now.
What exactly had Marshall been trying to say? And why had he vanished when Stanton had come into the room?
“Did you see anything?” Stanton asked from the doorway.
Suddenly deciding to keep Marshall’s appearance to myself, I
said, “No. It’s as if the whole room has been wiped clean.”
I glanced toward the door as I climbed to my feet, only to find that Stanton had already left the room.
In the wake of my failure to help him, I had apparently been dismissed.
19
NOW
Denise dreamed.
In her dream she was walking, in the depths of a wide tunnel somewhere underground. A drainage system. A mining shaft. Something like that. The walls were smooth and uniform, clearly man-made, and every fifty feet or so a light hung from the ceiling above, dimly lighting the way ahead.
She wasn’t alone.
Hunt was hurrying down the hallway with her, pulling her along with one hand; the incongruity of being led by a blind man was not lost on her.
That was what dreams were like though, full of inconsistencies that nature would never allow in the real world.
But this was no ordinary dream. It had that peculiar sense of inevitability that she had come to recognize as a hallmark of her precognitive visions, short glimpses of a future that might be, could be, but would not necessarily be true.
She ignored them at her own risk.
Her bare feet splashed through a puddle of dank water and Hunt glanced back at her sharply, raising a finger to his lips in the signal for silence.
But he was too late. The damage had been done.
An inhuman wail echoed from somewhere back down the passage behind them. The sound of it set her heart to hammering in her chest and filled her with dread.
Something was following them!
“Run!” Hunt shouted, hauling her forward as he followed his own advice and took off at a pace she never would have imagined possible for a man in his physical condition. They ran for all they were worth as the sounds of pursuit drifted down the hallway behind them.
Hunt never faltered, never hesitated, even when the hallway branched in different directions. She stumbled along in his wake as best she could, but she was already exhausted from the first confrontation with … She couldn’t remember the details, but a vague memory loomed dark and painful in the depths of her mind, and she knew she couldn’t keep up this pace much longer. They had to find help soon or it was all over for both of them.
They ran on.
The corridors seemed to go on forever; more than once Denise stumbled and nearly fell. Each time Hunt caught her and supported her for several steps until she could move again on her own. She liked to think of herself as tough, but it was obvious that it was only Hunt’s strength and determination that kept them moving forward.
It wasn’t enough, though.
The sounds of pursuit were growing closer and one look at Hunt’s anxious face let her know that they weren’t going to make it.
At the intersection he skidded to a stop. Pointing up the right-hand corridor he said, “Dmitri is waiting for us at the end of that passage. Just stay in the main hallway and you can’t miss him.”
“What about you?”
Hunt shook his head, ignoring the question. “Remember, straight ahead until you find Dmitri. Now go!”
“Hunt?”
Another eerie howl echoed through the halls then, much closer than before; at the sound of it Hunt shoved her forward. “Go!” he shouted, pointing again at the right-hand tunnel. “Run!”
Denise ran. She couldn’t help herself. Whatever it was that was following them filled her with such atavistic fear that she had no choice but to run, and run for all she was worth.
She told herself she would find Dmitri and return with him to help, but deep in her heart she knew it wouldn’t matter. Hunt would be dead long before they could return.
She glanced back, wanting one last look at the man who was sacrificing himself so she would have a chance to survive.
Hunt stood in the center of the hallway, his back to her. For just a moment she thought she saw two other figures standing there with him, a little girl on his left and a large hulk of a man on his right, but then the corridor curved ahead of her and she lost sight of him.
She ran on, praying to Gaia to keep him safe.
She hadn’t gone more than a half-dozen steps farther when a terrible, pain-filled cry filled the tunnel around her and she stumbled and fell …
… only to wake up on her couch, her heart hammering in her chest and a cry for help on her lips.
Doing what she could to calm down, she glanced at her watch.
10:15.
It had been just after six when she’d put her head down to rest for a minute. She hadn’t intended to fall asleep, but obviously Mother Gaia had other plans for her. She knew that was where the dream had originated, for rather than fade with the passage into wakefulness, the details of her dream lingered, further proof of its precognitive nature.
Her Goddess was trying to tell her something.
Had been trying ever since Hunt had first appeared to her in that mirror in her client’s apartment.
Determined to try to speak to him once more, Denise pulled on her shoes, grabbed her coat, and headed out the door. If Hunt kept to his usual routine, she’d find him at Murphy’s.
This time, he wouldn’t blow her off so easily.
20
NOW
Marshall had been trying to tell me something, and I was determined to figure out just what it was, but there was no way I was going to be able to do so with Stanton and the rest of the crime scene crew milling about. I needed a place to hole up for however long it was going to take for them to clear out and then go back on my own.
Thankfully, I knew just the place.
I was getting out of the cab in front of Murphy’s when I heard a woman call my name. The events of the last few days had left me shorttempered and easily annoyed, so I did my best to pretend I hadn’t heard.
I paid the cabdriver and stepped away from the curb, using my cane to guide me. I’d only gone a few feet when I felt a hand grab my arm.
“Let me help you, Mr. Hunt.”
My nose told me what my eyes could not. It was the woman from the other night. The woman who smelled of cinnamon, coffee, and just a touch of jasmine. I’d noticed her scent when she’d asked to buy me a drink and it was peculiar enough that I remembered it. Had a hard time forgetting it, in fact, and the way it made me feel only increased my irritability.
I disliked being touched, even by a woman who smelled like that, and I yanked my arm out of her grip. “Don’t touch me,” I said, a bit more forcefully than was really necessary, but I just couldn’t seem to help myself. “I don’t need your help.”
“Sorry.”
I could tell by the change in her tone that I had hurt her feelings. Good, I thought, maybe she’ll leave me alone.
No such luck.
“Would you like me to get the door?” she asked.
I planted my feet and refused to move. For all I knew she was a terrific human being, but for some reason she made me so damned uncomfortable whenever she got close that it practically made my skin crawl.
Rather than answering her question, I asked one of my own.
“What do you want?”
“Just to talk, that’s all.”
“Not interested.”
I moved forward, hoping she wouldn’t follow.
“Well, then, how about that rain check? You know, for that drink?” Her tone was back to being cheerful, hopeful, but this time I could hear the effort behind it.
I stopped and turned to face her. Now I could see the faint shimmer of an aura around her, marking her as one of the Gifted, and the sight only increased my impatience. The last thing I needed was to be involved with another freak like me.
“What the hell is it with you?” I asked, my tone conveying my rising anger. “Can’t you see I want to be alone? Are you so hard up that you have to hit on a blind guy?”
“No. Nothing like that … Goddess, is … is that what you think?” she stammered. She sounded like the remark threw her off.
I didn’t care. The events at Marshal
l’s were on my mind and I didn’t want to be bothered any longer.
“Look. I don’t know who you are or what you want, but I really just want to be left alone. Go bother someone else.”
Apparently she finally got the point, because she didn’t try to stop me as I pushed my way inside Murphy’s.
I gave them four hours and then caught a cab back to Marshall’s neighborhood. I had the cabbie drop me off two blocks from the scene. From there I made my way down the street with my cane and a little help from Whisper. She led me right past the front door and its thick ribbon of yellow crime scene tape, giving me a chance to glance inside and see if there were any lights on. When I saw that there weren’t, we ducked down the alley just beyond the entrance and climbed the low fence at the back that surrounded the postage-stamp-sized backyard. After that, it was a simple matter to jimmy the door lock with the tire iron that I’d borrowed from Dmitri and was carrying under my coat.
I hadn’t made it halfway through the gallery before I ran into trouble, though.
“Don’t move, asshole.”
The voice came from my left. The sound of a pistol being cocked accompanied it. That was enough to make me freeze where I stood.
So much for getting in and out with no one the wiser.
“That’s it. Just stay right where you are.”
A flashlight clicked on and shone directly in my face.
I threw up one hand to shield my face from the light and beside me I felt Whisper mimic the action with her own hand.
A guard moved out of the shadows beside me and I wanted to hit myself for not realizing that the gallery would have wanted to protect its investment in all that artwork. Given the way the world worked, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the prices probably soared through the roof when word of the artist’s murder got out. As the guard moved closer I got a good look at him and was relieved to see that he was wearing the uniform of a private security company rather than that of the Boston PD.
A rent-a-cop I could handle.
“Thought you could just help yourself, did you? The poor schmuck’s only been dead since this morning and the grave robbers are already on the prowl, huh?”
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